Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Jenavian
“Jen” Vale is a psychogenetically enhanced “spider”; her job is to seek out “flies”, humans who
exhibit psychic abilities. Careful,
careful, little flies. If the Spider
catches you, you’ll be taken to see The Widow, where your only choices are to
be reprogrammed or to be put to death.

Markus Coveri is the foremost fly on the run,
because he’s a Spider who’s “turned”.
He’s also Jen’s ex-partner, so she is particularly determined to bring
him in.

When their paths cross and Markus tries yet again to “turn” Jen, you know
sparks will fly. And arguments. And lots of shots.

What’s To Like...

This
is a fine piece of Sci-Fi Space Opera, if you’re familiar with that
sub-genre. There are a whole bunch of
planets, creatures, and characters to get acquainted with.; the pace is fast,
and the action is plenty. There is some
cussing, but that’s also an integral component of most Space Operas.

The Spider and The Fly is the first book in a
series (a trilogy, perhaps?) as well as a standalone novel. The Amazon blurb lists it as being 370 pages
in length. It felt longer than that, but
I mean that in a positive way.

The characters are well-developed.
I wouldn’t call them “gray”, but none of them are pure black or white
either. You'll probably grow to like
Thexyl, Jen’s current partner.
Everything builds nicely to an exciting and satisfying climax.

You mght detect some outside
“influences” here. Thexyl comes
off as a reptilian hybrid of Spock and Data.
The concept of psionic spaceships is quite akin to Peter F. Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn trilogy. And the ending is very Star Wars-ish. But these are just herbs-&-spices added
to an original universe and storyline to enhance its flavor.

Excerpts...

“What the hell is
that?”

Markus glanced
over his shoulder and noticed Mira lurking behind him on the headrest. She was still scrunched up in a ball, her
green eyes locked directly on Jen, and her tail twitching ever so slightly.

“That’s Mira,” he
said. “It’s her apartment, really. I just borrow it from time to time.”

Jen’s lips
twisted in disgust as she turned back to him.
“Why?”

“I assume you
mean ‘why do I have a cat?’ I think if I
have to answer that, you’re not going to understand it anyway.” (loc. 3969)

“Think of it this
way, Henri,” Foln said, forcing a smile.
“If I die, you get to take over.”

“Wonderful,” the
doctor grumbled. “You know how much I’ve
always wanted to be a politician.”

Foln
shrugged. “Thirty years ago you seemed
quite fond of the idea of being a revolutionary hero who’d inevitably go down
in a blaze of glory.”

“That’s because
it got women to sleep with me. At this
point, it will take a lot more than false bravado to get one into my bed.”(loc. 5843)

Kindle Details...

The
Spider and The Fly sells for $3.99 at Amazon. Its sequel, Rebellion,
sells for $5.99. C.E. Stalbaum has
four other books available for the Kindle, with prices ranging from free
to $4.99.

Science Fiction has evolved considerably since
its “golden days” of the 1950’s. You can
now choose among “hard” sci-fi, “speculative” sci-fi, “fantasy” sci-fi, and a
slew of other sub-genres, including Space Opera.. While I enjoy the “sci-fi classic” authors (H.G. Wells,
Andre Norton, etc.) their works sometimes become “samey”. I for one am happy that today’s science
fiction authors have a much wider vista to choose from. We the readers are the
real winners because of this.

9 Stars. If you’re a veteran Space Opera reader, you
will find this to be fine example of it.
If you’re new to Space Operas, The
Spider and The Fly is a great place to start.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Finn
Mac Cool is a mythical warrior in pre-Christian Ireland. You can read the
Wikipedia article about him here. Legendary
he may be, but stories such as his often arise from historical events and real
people.

But
how do they “grow” into larger-than-life characters? In Finn Mac Cool,
Morgan Llywelyn weaves a fascinating hypothesis about how just such a thing
might have come about.

What’s To Like...

As always, Morgan Llywelyn’s writing is breathtaking
and the characters are all richly three-dimensional, “gray”, and continue to
develop as the story progresses. There
are unexpected plot twists, despite the author having to stay within the
confines of the established legends.
There is Romance, Action, Drama, History, and perhaps even a bit of Magic
courtesy of the Tuatha de Danann. So no
matter what genre you’re in the mood for, you’ll likely to find it here.

The book explores numerous themes, some of
which are :

How history can evolve into legends.

Heroes grow old, and so do kings.

Compensation (think ‘karma’) can be brutal.

A
caste system can be brutal as well.

Oaths and duty are sacred obligations.

The ending is both logical and surprising, and I found myself constantly
changing my guess as to how Finn’s relationships with Goll, Cormac, and Oisin would
be resolved. Celtic Ireland is
beautifully portrayed, and my only quibble is with the mention of chess. Sorry, Ms. Llywelyn; chess came out of
ancient Persia, and would not have spread this far by Finn’s time.

Kewlest New Word. . .

Coibche(n.) : the bride-price a man had to pay to a
woman for the right to marry her.

Excerpts...

The thudding sound was not so muffled now. Accompanied by a curious hiss and slap, it
echoed along the waterway.

“Did you ever hear anything like that
before?” Finn asked Goll.

“Never.
Be ready; it could be danger.”

Finn grinned. “Is that a promise?”(pg. 64)

“His are splendid tales for telling around a campfire, but
I cannot vouch for their accuracy, and our children’s children might not be
well served if the more outrageous stories were made part of our history.”

The chief historian, a thin-legged, round-belied man with a
prodigious memory, found this an astonishing conversation. “Are you telling me Finn Mac Cool would lie
about the achievements of himself and the Fianna?”

“He would not lie, I think. But he . . . adds colour. A great deal of colour.”(pg. 342)

“Finn doesn’t know how to
talk to a woman. His mother was a deer.” (pg. 102)

As
a piece of historical fiction, Finn Mac Cool is
superb There are a couple ‘adult situations, but that’s
in keeping with the times. Finn and his band
of warriors are mighty and brave, but the women here are strong as well.

This
is my third Morgan Llywelyn novel. The
other two are reviewed here and here.
Each one has been a literary delight, and Red
Branch is sitting on my TBR shelf.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Is Time really the fourth dimension? If so,
can we move back and forth in it, just like any other dimension? Nowadays, this is a major topic in Quantum
Physics. But H.G. Wells was
contemplating it way back in the 1890’s.

Of
course, the big question is what kind of world we’d find by traveling forward
in time. Super geniuses hopping around
in flying cars? World peace? Or something else that’s a bit less advanced?

What’s To Like...

This is a groundbreaking book. It isn’t the first novel to deal with Time
Travel (the Wikipedia list is here), but it is the first one with this topic to
be a major bestseller, and it is fair to say it spawned the whole time Travel
genre.

If
you don’t like books with a gazillion characters to keep track of, The Time Machine is for you. There is the Time Traveller himself (his name is
never given), and Weena, his love interest in the far-flung future
(802,701 years, to be exact). That’s
about it, except for the TT’s present-day companions, and the various unnamed
Eloi and Morlocks.

The Time Machine starts a bit slow, opening
just as the Time Traveller makes it back to our time, and his friends and
acquaintances greet his chrono-hopping claim with understandable
skepticism. But as he begins to tell his
tale, things get interesting and zip along at a nice pace up through the very
end.

The two things that surprised me about the book were its shortness (128
pages) and the political undertone to it.
H.G. Wells sided squarely with the working class, and the
inherent separation between Labor and Capitalism is the basis for his
predictions of the future in The Time
Machine.

The main time-jump is the first one, from now to 802,701 years from
now. But the Tme Traveller also makes
some further jumps, ending up 30 million years in the future. Those “end-times” scenes are powerful. The storyline’s ending (the Epilogue, actually) is superb.

Kewlest New Word. . .

Cicerone(n.) : a
guide who gives information about antiquities and places of interest to
sightseers.

Excerpts...

“At last, hot and
tired, I sat down to watch the place.
But I was too restless to watch long; I am too Occidental for a long
vigil. I could work at a problem for
years, but to wait inactive for twenty-four hours – that is another matter.” (loc. 493)

But to me the
future is still black and blank – is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual
places by the memory of his story. And I
have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers – shrivelled now, and
brown and flat and brittle – to witness that even when mind and strength had
gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.(loc. 1213)

Kindle Details...

The copyrights have expired on a
number of pieces of classical literature, including The Time Machine. So you can
download it for free at Amazon, anytime you want.

“But is it not some
hoax? Do you really travel through time?” (loc. 1189)

The
bulk of the story is told in first-person narrative, which is not the most
exciting way to tell a tale. You are
assured that the Time Traveller will survive because, well, he’s back here
telling you about it.

I
read The Time Machinebecause I have a
modern-day sequel to it – Stephen Baxter’s The Time Ships
– sitting on my TBR shelf, and it seemed logical to read the “Book One”
first. Allowing for the fact that it is
“early days Science Fiction” (the genre has evolved considerably since then),
it was a pleasant, ahead-of-its-time
read, with lots of good points to ponder.

8 Stars. Subtract
1 star if you like your Science Fiction with lots of
gratuitous violence and/or sex. This is speculative sci-fi, not Space Opera.

Friday, December 13, 2013

On the Maine coast, an extremely bright meteor
flashes right over Abbey Straw’s head before disappearing over the
Atlantic.In California, scientist Mark
Corso is working on an ambitious Mars-mapping project when he receives an
unexpected package from his recently-deceased mentor.And in Washington, the government sends Wyman
Ford on a covert mission to Cambodia, to check out a radioactive gemstone mine.He doesn’t have to do anything; just observe.

Three
disparate storylines, without any apparent connection.So why does someone now want to kill all
three protagonists?

What’s To Like...

Douglas Preston wrote it, so you know that the
action will be non-stop and that there will be a Crichton-esque science twist.But Impact
also has a human angle, involving the generation gap that separates Abbey and
her father.

Most of the characters are “gray”.Abbey and her friend Jackie are potheads; Corso is ambitious but rash.And Abbey’s dad has to cope with her
proclivity for wrecking boats.Wyman is
a bit too “white hat”, and Randall Worth is utterly “black hat”.The killer is resourceful, alert, and catches
some lucky breaks.I like my baddies
that way.

The
language is occasionally R-Rated; but that makes it real-world.This is a standalone novel, although I gather
Preston has written several books featuring Wyman Ford.There isn’t a hint of romance; this is a
guy-book.

The “action ending” is superb;The “science ending” is a bit contrived.It would’ve been edgier to leave the world dangling as to the
possibility of outer space interaction.

Kewlest New Word. . .

Tuk-Tuk(n.):a
three-wheeled motorized vehicle used as a taxi.(Google-image
it)

Excerpts...

”Abbey, what’s in the box?”

Her father stood in the doorway of the
kitchen, still wearing his orange rubber boots, his checked shirt stained with
diesel fuel and lobster bait.His
windburned brow was creased with suspicion.

“A telescope.”

“A telescope?How much did it cost?”

“I bought it with my own money.”

“Great,” he said, his gravelly voice tense,
“if you never want to go back to college and stay a waitress the rest of your
life, blow your paycheck on telescopes.”

“Maybe I want to be an astronomer.”(pg. 3)

“A few years ago the Hubble Space Telescope stared for
eleven days at an empty spot of night sky no bigger than a dust speck.Night after night it collected the faintest
light from that pinpoint of sky.It was
an experiment to see what might be there.You know what it saw?”

“God’s left nostril?”

Abbey laughed.“Ten thousand galaxies.Galaxies never seen before.Each one with five hundred billion
stars.And that was just one pinprick of sky, chosen at random.”(pg. 120)

“Ah, well.A boat’s just a boat.”(pg. 182)

There
are some weaknesses.Wyman’s “plan” for
dealing with the Cambodian labor camp is a royal WTF, and all of the Southeast
Asians are stereotyped.Ditto for the depiction
of Muslims towards the end of the book.Some of the
science is apparently flawed, and the overall plotline, while action-packed,
doesn’t have any “twists” to it.The
killer chases our heroes, eventually catches them, and the
exciting-but-predictable outcome ensues.

OTOH,
if you’re not an astronomer or a radiation expert (and I’m not), and you’re just looking
for a thriller that will keep you turning the pages, Impactserves just fine.

7½ Stars.Add 1 star if
you’re really in the mood for a beach/airport novel.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Suexliegh
(pronounced
“Swoo-Lee-Ay”) is a man who has it all – virtually unlimited riches,
unbelievable luck, supreme self-confidence, a blue-blood pedigree, and a
devoted and perfect butler named Quincy.

Quincy considers it an honor to be in Suexliegh’s employ.It would be a great legacy to pass on to his
son, Quincy Junior, who is an eager trainee.It would be a job of a lifetime, and a lifetime job; if only Suexliegh
had an heir.But for that, a Mrs.
Suexliegh is required.

What’s To Like...

The
humor is madcap, and initially plentiful.When Suexliegh finds himself under house
arrest, his fondness for the horse races is jeopardized.So he simply buys all the houses between him
and the racetrack, and expands his property lines accordingly.Sheer genius.

For all his assets, Suexliegh is a pompous antihero.I like antiheroes.And for all his gentility, he is a bundle of
stress when it comes to wooing the opposite sex. Ah, but butlers can serve as mentors when needed.

The chapters are short – James Pattersonly short, but it works nicely. The
writing is good, but I struggled with the storytelling.It seemed “segmented”.We’d follow one plotline for a while – the races,
the jail, the wooing, Dmitri the Painter, the Burgundy Scoundrels, etc, - then that
would get unceremoniously dropped, replaced by a different plotline, and
off we’d go in a different direction.It
didn’t “flow” right for me.

The
“tone” of the book also changes as the story progresses.The humor becomes sparser and the emphasis
shifts to the development of Suexliegh’s character.Maybe this is inherent to moving the story
along, but I for one missed the yuk-yuks.

The
ending was a mixed bag.There was no
surprise in resolving the girl issue, other than wondering why she didn’t
choose “none of the above”.But the
resolution of the Quincy/Quimcy Jr. plotline was masterful.

Excerpts...

He recognized many
of them either by acquaintance or front-page scandal.Verne Dempsey made a fortune when his
company, claiming to have cured the common cold, went public until the FDA
realized he was just selling ground up Skittles.Jules Reneau eliminated his competition at a
French newspaper by tossing him into the paper press while it was running.Needless to say, the story was all over the
front page. (loc. 456)

“Quincy, what
should I do?I know nothing about women
except that they can vote.They can vote, yes?

“Yes.”

“Of course, of
course.Separate but equal and all
that.They’re such an enigma to me, what
with their long hair and all.”(loc.
674)

Kindle Details...

The
Success of Suexiegh sells for $2.99 at Amazon. Zack Keller's other offerings appear to all be
short stories, but a second full-length novel, Penwell, is said to be close to being published.

A greyhound race without wagers is much like a deviled egg without
paprika.Decent, agreeable, but not
thrilling.(loc.
587)

Don’t let my quibbles scare you off – The Success of Suexlieghis a delightful read for
anyone who enjoys the antihero more than the hero.The humor was great, and if Suexliegh isn’t fully rehabilitated by the
end of the book, at least he’s no longer a complete butthead.Besides, his “needs improvement” status
justifies developing this into a series.

19-year-old
Joe Kavalier has just arrived in New York City from Prague, fleeing Nazi
persecution.He can do marvelous
drawings, but obviously knows only fragmentary English.

He’s staying at his aunt’s house, rooming with his cousin, 17-year-old
Sammy Clay.Sammy’s artistic talent is
marginal, but he has a way with words, and has an inexhaustible trove of catchy
plotlines.

They have the talent and potential to be a top-flight comic book team,
and rake in some big bucks.But it’s a
jungle out there for a pair of naïve teenagers, and life will throw a lot of
distractions at them.Can they stay
focused and overcome the challenges?Come on, they’re teenagers.

What’s To Like...

The writing is elegant, and it’s easy
to see why Kavalier & Clay won a Pulitzer Prize.The character-development is wonderful, and the
three main characters – Joe, Sammy, and Rosa – make for an a surprisingly
original love triangle.

There
are a bunch of themes running throughout the book – Houdini-esque magic tricks,
business deals, anti-Semitism, love, hatred, the challenge of emigrating to a new country – but
the main ones are life in pre-WW2 America in general (especially for its Jewish citizens),
and the golden era of comic books in particular. They are all superbly done.Oh, “gayness before it was acceptable” is also
dealt with, so if you’re a homophobe, you probably won’t like this book.

There are a few adult situations and language, but really not enough to
call it R-rated.There is some, but not
a lot, of action; and just enough humor (primarily Sammy’s remarkable wit) to season
the story properly.

It
took me about 100 pages to get used to Chabon’s writing style, but once
I did, this became quite the page-turner for me.And character-driven stories are generally
not my genre.

Kewlest New Word...

Aetataureate(adj.):of
the “golden years”.Here, the phrase is “the aetataureate delusion”, which seems to refer to the (apparently false) notion
that old age is fun.

Excerpts...

Although Joe had never forgotten the girl whom he had
surprised that morning in Jerry Glovsky’s bedroom, he saw that, in his
nocturnal reimaginings of the moment, he had badly misremembered her.He never would have recalled her forehead as
so capacious and high, her chin so delicately pointed.In fact, her face would have seemed overlong
were it not counterbalanced by an extravagant flying buttress of a nose.Her rather small lips were set in a bright
red hyphen that curved downward just enough at one corner to allow itself to be
read as a smirk of amusement, from which she herself was not exempted, at the
surrounding tableau of human vanity.(pg.
237)

“So,” said Bacon, what’s he so hot to trot about?”

“His girl,” said Sammy.“Miss Rosa Luxemburg Saks.”

“I see.”Bacon had a little bit of a southern accent.“She a foreigner, too?”

“Yeah, she is,” Sammy said.“She’s from Greenwich Village.”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“It’s a pretty backward place.”

“Is it?”

“The people are little more than savages.”

“I hear they eat dogs there.”

“Rosa can do amazing things with dog.”(pg. 302)

“Praise means so much when
it comes from a lunatic.”(pg.
539)

The
first half of the book – from Joe’s arrival in NYC in 1939 until December 7th
1941, borders on being perfect.Then the
storyline gets a tad disjointed, as we jump instantly to Joe’s tenure in
Antarctica, and his subsequent going to ground.The ending takes place in 1954, and is somewhat contrived, but frankly,
I don't think there’s any adequate way to end a complex story like this.

You
can tell Chabon did a lot of research into the time period used and the world
of comic books.The result is a
detailed, authentic-feeling, including real people like Salvador Dali and Orson
Welles making cameo appearances.

9½ Stars.10 Stars for the first half; 9 stars for the
second half. This is truly a
masterpiece.